How it works

The pieces exist. Nothing has connected them.

Tanzania has already built the tools that reduce the risk of lending to agriculture. What is missing is one intelligence that connects them and puts the result in the hands of everyone a season depends on. The aim is agricultural finance that reaches smallholder farmers, through value chain finance and group lending.

Where a part is not live yet, the page says so.

What already exists

The environment that reduces the risk of lending to agriculture is already here.

Each piece was built separately over the years, and each is in use.

Guarantee schemes

Stand behind part of a loan, so a lender can say yes to a borrower it could not carry alone.

A development lender

Lends to agriculture where others do not yet go, and shares risk with the lenders that follow.

Banks and microfinance institutions

Hold the products a season needs: input loans, group loans and value chain finance.

Leasing providers

Finance the equipment a farm cannot buy outright.

Insurers

Cover the perils a season cannot carry on its own, such as weather.

Cooperatives

Bring growers together to buy inputs and sell a crop as one.

Savings groups

Members save and lend among themselves, by rules they keep themselves.

Warehouse receipts

Turn a stored crop into something a lender will lend against.

It was built piece by piece, and the pieces do not meet.

Each knows only its own part: the guarantor the loans it covers, the lender its borrowers, the cooperative its members. Nobody sees all of it when a lender decides, so the same season is assembled by hand, file by file, often too late for planting. The judgement that could connect them sat with a few people who can be in one place at a time.

Where LitFin Intelligence sits

Behind that environment, connecting it.

LitFin Intelligence does not replace a guarantor, a lender, an insurer or a cooperative, and does not compete with them. It connects them, so the people a season depends on do not have to find one another and make the market themselves. It never lends, holds money, insures or guarantees, and because it has no stake in the answer, every party can rely on what it shows.

The pieces already exist. LitFin Intelligence is the layer behind them that threads them into one chain.

Today this works on the lender's side. The layer that connects the whole chain is not live yet.

What it is

Two careers of judgement, joined to an AI consultant. Together, that is Mwikila.

The first part is more than four decades of experience from two careers, one in banking and credit and the other in agricultural production. The second is an AI-powered, PhD-level consultant in agriculture, agricultural value chains and their financing. Mwikila, the AI Senior Agriculture & Finance Consultant, is the one everyone on the chain talks to, in English or Swahili.

The farmer, the group, the supplier, the off-taker, the buyer, the lender, the guarantor and the insurer all meet the same mind, each in their own role
He explains every conclusion, step by step
He is not tied to any one AI model

The three layers

How the lender thinks. How the farm works. And Mwikila between them.

Finance fails in agriculture when two kinds of judgement are not in the same place at the same time. LitFin Intelligence puts a layer between them that holds both.

Mwikila sits between the lender and the farm, and the village-based agronomists carry him to the field.

How the lender thinks

What a lender asks, what it needs to see, and what conditions unlock financing. This layer works today.

Mwikila, with the village-based agronomists

Mwikila carries both kinds of judgement to everyone on the chain, and the village-based agronomists are his extension on the ground. This layer is being built.

How the farm and the farmer work

What a plot can produce, what a season costs, when the crop comes in, and what can go wrong between planting and sale.

What it produces

Confidence in a chain.

A finding is only worth sharing if everyone relying on it can check it. Three properties make that possible.

Every participant, for their role

A person, a group of people, a company or a group of companies. Each is assessed in their own right for the part they play in this chain, not in general.

Every finding shows what it rests on

No finding is a bare opinion. Each one points to the document, the record or the visit behind it, so anyone relying on it can check it.

The same evidence gives the same finding

A finding does not depend on who asked or on the day they asked. If the evidence has not changed, neither has the answer.

What the layer does

What it does, and why.

Only the first works today. The rest are being built.

It appraises.

A lender finances what it can see. Credit appraisal, underwriting and risk analysis turn a file into a case a committee can question line by line.

It tells every participant where they stand.

Whether the project is viable, what a lender will ask, what is missing and what to do next, in the participant's own language.

It composes the chain a season needs.

Often a chain is missing a link. LitFin Intelligence finds and connects the supplier, the growers, the off-taker, the cover and the lender.

It helps groups form and organise.

A lender cannot appraise every smallholder one by one. A group formed around what its members want, with documents a lender can rely on, is a borrower it can finance.

It assesses every participant in their own right.

A grower's loan rests on the supplier delivering and the off-taker paying. So each is examined for the role they play in this chain.

The village-based agronomists verify and advise on the ground.

Some things can only be known by standing on the plot. What a participant said is confirmed where it happened.

It follows the season.

A loan is decided once and a season runs for months. A problem seen in time can still be acted on.

A person and a licensed institution always decide.

LitFin Intelligence prepares the case. Whether to lend, cover or guarantee stays with the institution.

Helping people get ready

The same steps, for anyone who must be organised first.

Some participants have to be organised before they can take part or be financed: a farm not yet run as a business, a group, a small supplier or buyer, and the chain itself. The pattern is the same each time, and it is not live yet.

Structure
Formed around what the members want: their purpose, needs, goals and capabilities. There is no fixed kind of group.
Documents drafted to a lender's standard
LitFin Intelligence helps draft the constitution and the agreements a lender expects to see.
Their own advocate, their own signatures
The members take the drafts to an advocate of their choosing, sign them and upload the signed documents. LitFin Intelligence drafts. It does not give legal advice, sign, stamp or stand in for the advocate.
A status everyone can see
Each document shows as done, in progress or missing, to everyone on the chain.
Assessed, then confirmed on the ground
The intelligence assesses every uploaded document. A village-based agronomist then confirms that it matches reality: these are the real members, their details are right, the advocate is real and the signing happened. The step is marked done once it has been assessed and confirmed.

The chain itself is set out the same way: who fills which role, what each has committed to, the calendar, and the order in which money is paid out.

Lenders, leasing providers, guarantors and insurers skip these steps. They are licensed institutions with structures of their own, and LitFin Intelligence works to their rules.

How a chain is cleared

The agronomist confirms. Only the intelligence clears.

Clearing a whole chain is the centre of the full system, and it is being built. It is designed so that no one person can wave a chain through.

Everything required is submitted and weighed
The intelligence checks that each participant has submitted what their role requires, weighs it, and compares it with official registries where those can be checked, such as business registration and identity. We claim no connection to any registry.
The agronomist goes to the ground with that analysis
A village-based agronomist starts a chain's evaluation and ends it. They compare what the intelligence holds with what is actually there and with what people say, and bring back what they find.
A disagreement raises a flag
If what the agronomist reports disagrees with what the intelligence holds to be true, a flag is raised, and the chain is not cleared until the flag is settled. So persuading an agronomist achieves nothing: the evidence has to satisfy the intelligence.
LitFin Intelligence clears
Each participant as right for their role, and the chain as ready. The agronomist does not clear anything.

Cleared means ready to be put in front of a lender. It is not an approval to lend.

What everyone sees

The rules of visibility are set out on Who it is for.

What every participant sees, what stays private and who can open the details: each rule is stated once, for every reader, on that page.

See what everyone sees

The village-based agronomists

The hands and the physical presence of LitFin Intelligence.

Trained in agriculture and based where the farmers are, the agronomist carries the intelligence to the field. The intelligence reads, weighs, asks and plans. Whatever a participant tells or hands the agronomist goes to it, and it tells the agronomist how to proceed.

Each agronomist carries the judgement of the two careers and the AI consultant, and never works alone or from memory.

We plan to recruit them from among the graduates of Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania's agricultural university in Morogoro. Nothing has been agreed with the university.

Not live yet: no agronomist is in the field.

Where we are

What works today, and what comes next.

Works today

Credit appraisal, underwriting and risk analysis for agricultural lending: for an individual loan, a group loan, or a whole portfolio
Preparing the case of a farmer, a group or an agribusiness to the standard a lender expects
In English or Swahili, with every finding showing what it rests on

Being built

Clearing a whole value chain as one case, with every participant assessed for their role
Helping groups and other participants form, organise and draft documents to a lender's standard
Village-based agronomists on the ground
The full chain visible to everyone on it, live, for the whole season
Following a financed season from planting to settlement

Tanzania first. East Africa is a plan.

The service works in Tanzania only. Every other East African country is a plan, and none is live.

No lender, guarantor, lessor or insurer is named on this page, and nothing on it rests on a figure we cannot source.

If you know this field, tell us where we are wrong.

We would rather hear it now. If you are one of the people a season depends on, Who it is for sets out what this does for you today and what changes later.

Talk to us Who it is for